As the year comes to a close, the Burning Man Arts festival, one of the biggest events of the year, is already preparing for 2019. Designs for the temple, which is central to the black rock city experience, have been revealed. Picked from a host of submissions for its "elegant simplicity", the... View full entry

Architecture, after all, dictates behavior: Public or private, indoor or outdoor, extravagant or humble, old or new, fake or real — these are a few of the obvious binaries by which we assess the spaces we inhabit. They are also the edges against which most architects hone their signature styles. [...] Tanijiri and Yoshida have instead devoted themselves to the liminal place where these elements break down; their designs [...] unite concepts that seem opposed.
— The New York Times

Thanks to the overwhelming clarity of [Le Corbusier's] positions, the bewitching nature of his epigrammatic style and the already-powerful international movement for Modernism, the impact he had on a rising generation of Japanese architects would prove to be immense. But it would be the nature of that impact to be felt only in conditions of overwhelming ambivalence.
— The New York Times

Nikil Saval traces Japan's modernism back to Le Corbusier citing influences on Kunio Maekawa and Kenzo Tange. Japan was the earliest country in all of East Asia to engage with Le Corbusier's work in the late 19th century, and by the 1930's many of his books has been translated into Japanese. The... View full entry

Freed from the conventions of architecture and construction, what would this world look like?

It’s a question Japanese architect Junya Ishigami has been trying to answer for the past decade, dreaming of structures that are as light as a cloud, as vast as the sky, as random as the trees in a forest or the stars in the sky.
— The Guardian

Glass Pavilion, Park Groot Vijversburg, NL. Image: junya.ishigami+associates.The Guardian's architecture critic, Oliver Wainwright, takes a closer at the fascinating work of Junya Ishigami, the bright new star on the Japanese architecture firmament, who is catching more and more mainstream... View full entry

[...] the value of the average Japanese house depreciates to zero in 22 years. (It is calculated separately from the land, which is more likely to hold its value.) Most are knocked down and rebuilt. Sales of new homes far outstrip those of used ones, which usually change hands in the expectation that they will be demolished and replaced. In America and Europe second-hand houses accounted for 90% of sales and new-builds for 10% in 2017. In Japan the proportions are the other way around.
— The Economist

The Economist article describes Japan’s throwaway housing culture as a phenomenon that is not only a burden on the national economy and the environment but also does not see renovation and refurbishment of existing structures as an appreciation in value. There are exceptions of course: one rare... View full entry

Tucked away in the dense network of narrow streets in Kyoto's central Gojo Karasuma district, an old house has come back to life and—after a thorough, yet thoughtful, makeover—enjoys now a refreshed existence as a boutique guest house for tourists visiting the area. In charge of the redesign... View full entry

Rejecting flashy forms in favor of buildings in harmony with their environment, the architect — poised to become world famous for his stadium for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo — is trying to reinvent his entire trade. [...]

Kuma, a constant source of paradoxes and ironies, often makes demagogic statements on behalf of his own brand of architectural modesty. “I want to change the definition of architecture,” he told me; in a way, he already has.
— The New York Times Style Magazine

Nikil Saval pens a beautiful profile of Kengo Kuma for T Magazine and investigates the architect's ongoing quest to ground his version of Modernism in authentic Japanese craftsmanship. View full entry

The Omoshiro Block is a note pad that unveils itself as it gets used revealing an architecture miniature hidden inside. Using laser-cutting technology, what appears as a regular cube of paper note cards eventually turns into an intricate miniature model. These unique note pads are designed by... View full entry

Kengo Kuma is one of Japan’s most significant living architects, thanks to his sophisticated integrations of traditional architecture with up-to-the-minute technologies. Unusually sensitive to materiality and technique, Kuma’s designs are irresistibly tactile, often resembling hand-woven... View full entry

There is Makoto Yamaguchi’s Polygon House, a quasi-Brutalist geode of distressed steel and glass that perches on a hill in a forest like an abandoned space pod; the concrete, glass and larch wood Omizubata N House by Iida Archiship Studio, as well as TNA’s Passage, Ring and Stage House(s)
— T Magazine

TNA architects intended the reedlike supports of the Square House to evoke blades of bamboo grass shooting up from the ground. Photograph by Mikael Olsson. Producer: HK ProductionsHanya Yanagihara visited the mountain-town of Karuizawa, which has a collection of houses designed by prominent... View full entry

Tokyo has held a groundbreaking ceremony for a $1.5bn (£1.2bn) national stadium that will host the 2020 Olympic Games.

The prime minister, Shinzo Abe, Tokyo’s governor, Yuriko Koike, and other dignitaries attended the event on Sunday at the site of the demolished national stadium that was used during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. [...]

The ceremony ended with a video showing how the stadium is expected to look and function once completed by November 2019.
— The Guardian

A quick refresher, here are just a few instances of the Tokyo Olympic Stadium saga in the Archinect news:Kengo Kuma selected for new Tokyo Olympic StadiumKengo Kuma & Toyo Ito rumored to be designers behind new Tokyo Olympic Stadium proposalsTokyo Olympics refusing to pay Zaha Hadid for work... View full entry

Over one year after its groundbreaking ceremony, MAD's Clover House is now complete. Built next to a rice paddy field in Okazaki, the family-run kindergarten marks MAD's first project in Japan. Siblings Kentaro and Tamaki Nara, who originally operated the kindergarten from their family's two-story... View full entry